


i don't wanna be your friend (i wanna kiss your lips)

by delicaterenegade



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/F, Feelings Realization, First Kiss, Fluff, Girls in Love, Mild Hurt/Comfort, set after they break up with the boys
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-11
Updated: 2019-07-11
Packaged: 2020-06-26 13:09:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,843
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19768873
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/delicaterenegade/pseuds/delicaterenegade
Summary: El knows what kissing is like. She really does.She knows what Mike's lips feel like pressed against hers, how his solidly broad torso collides awkwardly with her shoulder, and how his large hands grip her forearm and cup her cheek. Kissing is nice. Pleasant. Tolerable.She knows what kissing is like.So why does looking at Max, with her blue eyes and soft features, change everything?





	i don't wanna be your friend (i wanna kiss your lips)

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from girl in red - "i wanna be your girlfriend"

“Hey, uh… is Mike a good kisser?” Max asks, playful curiosity sitting obviously on her face.

El looks up in surprise and laughs, “I don’t know,” she says.

The girl pauses for a second. In truth, whether kissing Mike felt good or not was never really on the table. Of course, it didn’t feel bad- Mike loved her and in return she loved him. It’s not that she didn’t enjoy the attention, at least at first. But kissing was something secondary, something she did because Mike wanted it, and because of what she knew from the beautiful people on TV. 

She had watched it plenty of times, the two lovers, lost in each other’s eyes, grasping at each other and embracing kisses like they’re the last two people on Earth. El always wondered what Hopper would get so choked up about when kissing Mike didn’t feel anything like that. 

Kissing felt… numbing. Boring almost. When she thought about Mike, with his pointy features and his boyish body she felt detached and dispassionate.

“He’s the first boy I’ve ever kissed,” she reasoned with herself more than she explained to Max. Kissing was just… like that, right? “What about Lucas?”

“He was alright,” Max shrugs nonchalantly, “Could be a bit slobbery though,” she demonstrates this by screwing her eyes shut and faux-kissing the air with her tongue, crudely imitating Lucas. When Max opens her eyes to see El’s response, her playful scolding quickly results in a burst of laughter from both the girls. El briefly muses what kissing Max would be like if it looked like that. Then her laughter subsides slightly, however, when she imagines kissing Max at all. El’s stomach does a confusing little flip as she looks down at her own bedsheets. Max, with her blue eyes and soft lips, everything that Mike isn’t.

“What is it _s_ _upposed_ to feel like?” El asks. Looking up at her redhaired friend suddenly carries a heavier weight than it did before, she wonders if she's the only one that feels it. 

“Well, uh,” Max starts, uncharacteristically unsure of what to say, “I guess… I mean it’s supposed to feel _good._ You sort of just know… it just feels right. You know?” When El responds with furrowed brows, Max leans in and narrows her eyes, “El, has Mike _ever_ made you feel like that?”

“I mean…”

“Oh my god!” she sits up with a startled laugh before shaking her head slowly “you don’t even _like_ him, do you?”

“I do! Or, I did. Just, not...” El cuts off her sentence and blushes furiously, “He’s a good friend…”

“But you don’t like kissing him,” Max states, understanding quietly seeping through her voice. There’s silence for a second, and all that can be heard is _Madonna_ playing through the Sharp stereo Hopper had given her earlier that year. “What’d I say?” Max grins, “There’s more to life than stupid boys,” she nudges the other girl with her elbow, and sends a smile so genuine it makes El’s heart suddenly ache.

“Yeah?” she smiles, barely restrained. She looks over at Max, whose face is aglow with a gleaming sheen of post-dancing sweat, and laughter. In a burst of confidence, she takes her hand. Warm. Slightly sweaty. But comforting, nevertheless.

Max squeezes her hand and looks into her eyes, “Yeah.”

Her piercing blue eyes have never looked so soft, and El’s throat is suddenly much too dry and her eyes far too wet. A wave of guilt and shame wash over her.

“I’m sorry.” she chokes out, pulling her hand from Max’s.

The redheaded girl furrows her brows in puzzlement, “For what?"

Eleven sighs, she is sorry for a lot of things. 

“When we first met. I was so mean to you,” El remembers, eyes growing wetter, the cruel anger running through her veins the first time she saw Max. Cool, beautiful, _normal._ And the feeling when Max first introduced herself, she took one look at the girl and a malicious, furious fire set aflame in her stomach. Max wanted to be _friends_ and she caused her _hurt_ and _pain._ She didn’t deserve Max. _"_ _I’m sorry,”_ she whispers, again.

“It’s all good,” Max reassures nervously, “I can see how it’d look like I was trying to replace you,” she smiles sadly, “Water under the bridge, right?”

“‘Water under the bridge’?”

“Yeah, like; ‘it’s in the past’, ‘I forgive you’,” she explains hurriedly, “You know?”

When El looks down at the palm in her hand and cradles it as if Max’s touch had imprinted in her skin, her voice only comes out a little bit wobbly, “Yeah, I do,”

\---

It isn’t until later into the night, when the air begins to rest heavy with the night sky, that El works up the nerve to bring it up again. Max is fawning at the pretty boys in her _Tiger Beat_ magazine.

“That’s Ralph Macchio. He’s the Karate Kid.” she points out, “Oh, I bet he’s an amazing kisser,” she sighs dreamily.

“Max?” El asks, timidly. She suddenly feels very vulnerable in her brightly colored attire.

“Hm?” Max flips the page. 

“What if… what if I don’t like kissing boys,” Max looks up, “…at all?”

“Like… you don’t _like_ kissing?”

El thinks about Max, and it’s the most intense thought she’s had all night. Red hair, in the soft light it almost looks like bronze and rust, but when the sun raises its clutches, her hair sets _aflame._ Max is radiant. And she makes El feel warm in a way Mike never did. 

Hopper makes her feel warm too, but it’s a different kind of warm. He makes her feel safe and cared for, Hopper is familiar in a way that nothing else is.

However, with Max, it is similar to the affection she shares with her friends. They understand and appreciate each other, in a way Hopper can’t. She looks into Max’s eyes and sees trust.

But despite all this, Max has also seemed to have rooted herself deep in El’s stomach and grown to saturate her brain, filling her thoughts and making her lightheaded. This kind of affection feels dangerous. The stolen glances and airy laughter makes her elated for something, but she isn’t quite sure what.

So when she has another dangerous thought, vivid and vibrant, about kissing Max like the beautiful people do on the TV, in the movies Hopper gets so choked up about, she has the most doubtless answer to Max’s question as her slightly dizzy head can conjure up. “No.” she speaks steadily, “I like kissing. I just don’t like kissing boys,”

Max’s mouth falls agape, first in confusion and then in shock, and for a terrible moment, El thinks she’s not going to say anything at all. But then her face falls into a toothy grin, she teases El and bumps into her shoulder playfully, “Well, then who could you _possibly_ kiss?”

El laughs, and rocks her shoulder back into Max’s, leading them both to collapse on her bed, music still blaring, magazines forgotten. Max’s hair pools around her neck messily, and El has the sudden urge to run her fingers through it. “You,” she whispers, finally.

The last thing El comprehends is the lovely blush on Max’s cheeks before the other girl leans in and kisses her.

To her surprise, the kiss isn’t like the ones on the TV, it’s chaste and quick, and the only thing she could taste was the slight honey-sweet flavor of soda when she licks her lips after Max pulls away. But it isn’t like kissing Mike either. _God,_ it’s so much better.

“El-”

“Jane.” El cuts her off abruptly, and then grows flustered, “Everyone calls me El- but my real name is Jane.”

She isn’t sure why she told her that, but Max smiles anyway, “Jane.” she says, testing out the name, “I like it. It’s beautiful,”

In response, ever so drunk on affection, Jane blurts the most prevalent thing on her mind, “You’re beautiful,”

“Shut up,” Max flushes, and then looks away laughing, breaking the little bubble they were contained in.

The rest of the night continues, Max and Jane talk earnestly about everything while simultaneously talking about nothing. The stereo continues to play, and they laugh over it until Hopper comes in and asks them to turn in off in an uncharacteristically polite manner. 

And when the summer moon is late in the sky and they finally decide to go to bed, after they’ve brushed their teeth and put on pajamas, they lay together, facing each other in the dark. This is when Jane, in a room full of expectant silence, whispers faintly, _"Can I kiss you again?"_

For a second she thinks Max is asleep, but then, even in the dark, she sees her nod.

\---

The next morning, when Hopper finds both girls sitting at the table, he sighs at the massive stack of triple-decker Eggos “extravaganza” between them. “Really kid?”

El shrugs with a mouth full of whipped cream.

“You’re killin’ me,” he says in somewhat-fake exacerbation as he snags a mug from the cupboard and puts on a pot of coffee. In return, Max and Jane make sly eye contact and break into very obvert laughter.

“Chief Hopper?” Max asks, later that morning. 

“Yeah,”

“Uh, can Jane stay the night at my house tonight?”

Hopper looks at Max, slightly surprised. He neglected to mention the hand holding underneath the table, or the complacent looks on both girls faces as if they had gotten away with something they weren’t supposed to. But this time, his eyes dart to El’s briefly, and he gives her a judicious yet suspicious look. _Jane._ Not even Mike ever called her that. And that little bastard would’ve married her the first chance he got.

Hopper quickly regains most of his composure, “Uh… Yeah. Yeah that’s uh… that’s fine.”

Max furrows her brows leerily, “Are you sure…?”

The Chief of Police looks between his daughter and his daughter’s friend, unsure of what to think, “Yes.” he finally replies, rethinks every decision he’s ever made, and scrambles for his hat.

It isn’t until later the next day, as Hopper’s hands grip the steering wheel, when he looks over at his daughter in the seat next to him, clearly caught in some sort of pleasant daydream, that he attempts to bring it up with her for the final time.

“So… um,” he clears his throat, racking his brain for any advice Joyce had given him for shit like this. Meanwhile, the barely restrained smile on El’s face quickly turns into wary distrust as she looks over at Hopper’s stiff posture.

“What?” 

Hopper looks into her defiant eyes and _goddammit_ why are kids so hard? “Look, kid. I just…”

“What?” El asks again bewilderedly, defensiveness crisp on her tongue.

This time Hopper just sighs loudly and defeatedly and runs his left hand through the side of his face as he slumps back in his seat and focuses his attention back on the road.

There’s a beat.

“Just… three inches, kid. _Three inches,"_

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! This is the first fanfic I've written since I was like, twelve. So any and all comments & criticisms are welcome! I never planned on publishing this, but I'm further living on the idea that if you can't find the content you want- then you might as well make it yourself (fuck yeah!!)  
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed it:)


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